Site Selection

Identify ideal locations for your business’s next phase of growth and expansion with a site selection analysis.

Site selection studies can help inform your location choice through quantitative and qualitative analysis of critical business factors so you can work to successfully execute your business plans.

Leverage negotiations with states and municipalities and pursue tax credits and incentives, while working within your decision-making process with guidance from our professionals.

How Selection Studies Help Improve Decisions

A site selection analysis can provide a company with important insights regarding critical location factors, including:

  • Workforce. Determine costs and availability.
  • Real estate. Locate suitable space for operations and assess proximity to customers, suppliers, transportation hubs, and more.
  • New geographies. Analyze new or strategic geographic regions critical to business growth.
  • Tax implications. Assess state and local tax impacts of jurisdictions where you locate your business.
  • Incentives. Identify financial incentives available to offset costs.

Additionally, a site selection analysis can help enhance your process with the following benefits

Manage Timing Proactively

Though it’s never too early to start site selection, waiting until a lease is signed or hiring begins can severely limit the potential available incentives.

Beginning a site selection analysis as soon as a project has some degree of certainty—budgets, forecasts, or more—can help provide enough runway to enhance incentives.

Engage Key Stakeholders

Mitigate insufficient and inconsistent inclusion of your leaders. A successful site selection analysis includes a broad group of internal stakeholders from the beginning and throughout the process.

This helps establish early involvement for needs that may not be on leadership members’ minds and buy-in for location criteria, as well as prevents delays in project timing and last-minute surprises.

Improve Outcomes

Businesses often favor a specific location early in the process, potentially ignoring other viable locations.

Reviewing multiple, qualified locations can help your business make more informed decisions and position the project to capitalize on potential incentives.

Maintain Compliance

Selecting a location isn’t the end of the process. Businesses receiving incentives will likely need to comply with annual reporting requirements to earn and utilize the provided incentives.

Ignoring these requirements can lead to agreement breaches and recapture of the incentives.

How the Process Works

Studies are driven by your specific needs. Analysis is determined by a set of nonbiased, mutually-defined criteria—with valuable financial incentives to your company pursued and not those of outside parties.

Collaborating closely with your leadership team, our professionals provide comprehensive coverage to help you assess options and guide your site selection each step of the way.

Fee structures are transparent and not driven by location—so you won’t need to worry that locations are positioned as beneficial solely for others’ financial gain.

Selection Steps

1. Define Project Parameters

  • Define project objectives
  • Identify and engage internal stakeholders
  • Determine preliminary location criteria—including workforce, transportation, suppliers, and customers—and determine initial geographic scope
  • Assess geographic scope by w

2. Analyze Locations

  • Refine project objectives, milestones, and deadlines
  • Send request for information (RFI) that specifies company objectives and site requirements, infrastructure, acreage, and environmental studies. Receive information for most compatible sites from each state and basic incentive eligibility.
  • Evaluate RFI responses
  • Create short lists of sites in each candidate state

3. Eliminate Sites

  • Refine short list—eliminate states without compatible sites
  • Conduct site tours to meet state and local representatives, initiative incentive discussions, and internally tailor site requirements
  • Send request for proposal (RFP) focusing on incentives, identifying any specific challenges or site shortcomings
  • Perform cost-based analysis based on RFP response with direct reduction in initial capital expenses and ongoing capital expenses—discounted to present value, as well as indirect reductions in capital and operational expenses to assess actual value

4. Negotiate Incentives

  • Commence negotiations with state and local representatives, provide an economic impact analysis to demonstrate projects total impact to candidate sites and locations
  • Conduct final site visits, potentially with face-to-face negotiations with representatives
  • Draft and negotiate project agreements to leverage competitive process among finalists and tailor incentives to address specific needs
  • Revise cost comparison based on further due diligence and negotiated incentives
  • Select final site including coordinating announcements, groundbreakings, and more

5. Maintain Compliance and Reporting

  • Comply with annual reporting requirements to earn and utilize provided incentives
  • Connect with internal compliance champion responsible for generating compliance reports
  • Review agreements periodically to keep business plans aligned with performance milestones related to incentives
  • Update state and local representatives with any changes to business plans or expectations on performance measures

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